The University of Adelaide recently announced the winners of its Australian Space Architecture Challenge (ASAC), a competition hosted by the Andy Thomas Centre for Space Resources that invites conceptual proposals for human habitation in deep space.
This year’s theme, Built on the Moon, tasked entrants with envisioning the Central Operations and Habitat Zone of the Australian Lunar Village, a planned permanent lunar settlement situated on the elevated ridgeline of the Malapert Massif near the Moon’s South Pole.
The inaugural challenge in 2024, open to Australian students and graduates across STEM and creative disciplines, garnered more than 80 team registrations. This year, the challenge expanded globally, attracting 110 teams from across the world.
The winning design, titled Umbra, was developed by a team comprising Alma Kugic, Denis Acker, Finley Wallace, Victor Ramirez and Nicholas Florio from the University of Stuttgart in Germany.
Second prize was awarded to Zhelun Zhu, Weiyi Wang, Ke Yan and Xinle Tian from the Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University in China for their project, Moon Metabolism.
Samer El Sayary of Alexandria University in Egypt and Ihab Shamseldin from Sydney took third prize for their project, Lunar Colony Reefs.
Amit Srivastava, organiser of the challenge and head of the Lunar Architecture Research Group at the Andy Thomas Centre for Space Resources (ATCSR), said space architecture has been a research theme since the centre’s inception in 2019.
“The competition this year was focused on industry integration, and we partnered with four Australian construction and robotics companies involved in lunar construction to showcase our homegrown capabilities,” Srivastava said.
“This included Crest Robotics and Earthbuilt (working on a new robot with a $500,000 grant from the NSW government), Luyten3D (Australia’s biggest manufacturer of 3D concrete printing machinery), 3VIMA (Sydney-based 3D concrete printing construction company) and Astroport Space Technologies (South Australia-based company developing construction material from lunar regolith and other lunar construction machinery).”
“Participants were invited to explore how Australian capabilities address NASA’s highest priority technology gaps, including how additive manufacturing and robotic construction can be leveraged for In-Situ Resource Utilisation (ISRU) and Waste Recycling.”
The winning entries from the Australian Space Architecture Challenge were displayed at a public exhibition as part of the Space Architecture Symposium (SAS) held on 4 October.
Source: Architecture - architectureau
